Tag Archives: rhubarb

This month’s focus of Tigress’ Can Jam which was announced by Joel and Dana of Well Preserved is berries. I was confused first because they wrote everything that ended in “berries” would qualify (like, strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries) – and there are quite a few more berries, that don’t end in “berries” but ARE berries (like redcurrants, black currants, sea buckthorn). But they clarified it and said ALL botanical berries would be fine. Continue reading >>

There was still some rhubarb left from my eco-box and my bargain at the grocery store, so I was looking on the internet for a new dish I could use it for and stumbled upon a recipe published on Chocolate & Zucchini. Fresh fruit covered with lumps of dough and cooked in the oven sounded really appealing to me. The original recipe called for whole wheat flour, but as it was kinda late at night and I didn’t want to wake up my kids by grinding the wheat (yes, I DO have a flour mill at home and grind the grain as needed) I just used all-purpose flour I had at hand. Also, the original recipe used crème fraîche (=lightly soured cream), whereas the recipe the author was referring to was using whipped double cream (= heavy cream). I figured I couldn’t do anything wrong by using normal whipping cream. As this dish should be served warm I prepared everything as far as it was ready to go in the oven and cooked it in the oven the next day. This worked totally fine. The result was refreshing, sweet but also kind of sour. I will definitely make this again. This is the recipe I used: continue reading >>

As I’ve written in my previous post, there is quite a big amount of rhubarb in my kitchen right now. My family loves jam on their toasts or rolls in the morning, so there is no way around cooking rhubarb jam. It was kinda hard for me to decide what gelling/ jam sugar (gelling sugar contains pectin as a gelling agent) to take because you have to choose between fruitiness and preservatives. In Germany gelling sugar comes in three different kinds (1:1, 2:1 and 3:1). The first number indicates what amount of fruit you use in relation to the sugar, e.g. 1:1 means 1 part fruit/1 part sugar, 2:1 2 parts fruit/1 part sugar etc. I like fruity jams more, but the 2:1 and 3:1 gelling sugars have preservatives added to them (which I want to avoid – it’s homemade jam, after all), so I went for the 1:1 gelling sugar. I also figured, that rhubarb was soooo sour that it hopefully wouldn’t really matter. Well, the jam IS kinda sweet (but really eatable), so I definitely won’t use 1:1 sugar for sweeter fruits like strawberries or so. I’ll find some other way to make jam – I might go for an attempt with agar agar which is a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed. Anyway, this is what I did this time: continue reading >>

I’ve never been much into rhubarb. I remember my childhood containing lots of rhubarb, especially in form of rhubarb semolina pudding. This wasn’t really something to get me addicted to rhubarb :-), even though I’m addicted to semolina pudding (which is made of semolina wheat and might be compared to cream of wheat or grits). I don’t know how, but a couple years ago I discovered that rhubarb makes perfect jam, particularly in combination with strawberries.

As there was rhubarb in my last week’s eco-box (comparable to CSA) and additionally, rhubarb was on sale at our grocery store last week (50% off, I just couldn’t resist), I had lots of rhubarb that needed to be put to good use. But I thought there had to be other delicious things on earth containing rhubarb than just jam. So I came up with the idea to combine the sourness of the rhubarb with the sweetness of a muffin. And it REALLY was a good idea! This combination is just perfect and makes a fluffy and moist muffin. The muffins didn’t rise as much as I had expected (I might add more baking powder next time), but they were still tasty.